Don't Cry for Me, California


In which our narrator has reached some decisions, while others have been revealed.

It's official: I'm going to try to stick around. By this I mean it's time for me to spend some serious time in Australia - the bulk of 2004, certainly, and perhaps more. Earlier in this blog I mentioned the mostly subconscious process I have been going through, weighing various factors, both pro and con, that would make this decision obvious - or not. Last week, something clicked, and I realized that yes, I do like here, so why not move? Is there anything holding me back? In a very practical sense, yes there is: I need to find some employment - consulting or otherwise - which would keep me here in some sort of style. Extravagance isn't necessary, by any means, but I can't really be hardscrabble in a foreign country, without my safety nets. It won't work - and I doubt they'd give me an appropriate visa.

So, on Friday morning, I screwed up my courage, and sat down to have a short conversation with Malcolm Long, the Director of AFTRS; he's a nice guy, and - after SPAA and the interim planning document - I've proven my value both as a thinker and a team player. I told him I was thinking of staying in Australia, and asked him for help in my quest for something like permanent employment. He asked me - rather naturally - "What do you want to do?"

It's a simple question, and it threw me for a loop. I hadn't been thinking in those terms. I realized that I normally don't think about things in that way. For the first years of my career I did what I knew how to do - software engineering. Later, as I began to follow my own star, into virtual reality, I did as I pleased, and - with a lot of help from friends and family - I held things together. It wasn't easy, financially, but it meant I could do as I pleased. Sometimes that meant I did little, sometime that meant periods of intense work. It varied. But there was never any question about what I would do: it was always clear.

Then came USC, and I became an official academic. That was fun - helping students learn about new media - and was painful, as the slow accretion of political ill-will (and my own mistakes) made my continued presence at the school ever less tenable. And after that, my career as a professional writer, publishing The Playful World, and becoming recognized as an "expert" in New Media. All well and good, but since New Media was associated with the Web bubble - which was just then beginning to pop - everything got mixed up, confused, then ignored. And then 9/11 and the recession and all of a sudden everything that seemed so steady and so sure no longer was, Finally to the horror of 2003, when there was no work, anywhere, or at least none that I really wanted to do.

Time for a change of venue. Time for a change of career.

I can't tell if I'm heading toward, or running away. I can't tell if this is the biggest mistake I'll ever make (that seems unlikely) or simply the biggest gamble (also somewhat unlikely) or just this year's inevitability. Everything in Australia has been made easy for me. Every path has been cleared. If that's the case, perhaps that's all the answer I need.

Posted: Tue - December 2, 2003 at 08:49 AM        

©